Tag Archives: affiliate commissions

The importance of preselling

First, what is preselling? Preselling is both an art and a science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then you send them to the site that sells what you’ve prepared them for. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

The gist is that you give your reader some useful information. Then send them to the sales page. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Some major benefits of this process:

It helps your reader trust you – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more traffic you can send to the sale page, the more commissions you’ll earn.

It takes your reader out of defense mode – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.

It preps them to buy – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. So they become more receptive to other messages. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.

You make more money – Now your reader arrives at the sales page in a buying mood. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!

It increases customer satisfaction – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.

It boosts your profits – Happy customers ask for refunds much less often. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

The need to presell is clear. You increase your profits. And produce happier customers. It’s a win-win-win!

OK, so how do you do it?

Now you know whey preselling is critical. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. Remember, there are two components – art and science.

Part 1 – The art of it

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.

It’s also a science

You also have to include some very specific things.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You have to have your end in mind. Your end goal is to make a sale of the product you’re preselling. You use the information to do this in one of two ways. The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. Or you can give them so much information that it feels overwhelming to do what you’re talking about. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

You also have to link to the product you’re promoting discretely. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. This increases your clicks. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? There’s a trick to make this work… You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.

You also want to link to the sales page from inside your article’s content. People are used to clicking on hyperlinked words to get information they’re looking for. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

Unfortunately…

This process is not easy – at all! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. This means you have to be able to write well, and have enough knowledge to be useful. Preselling skills. Yes, you must providing useful content. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. Or provide so much information that they see how hard it will be to implement.

Choosing your products. Next, you’ve got to pick the right product to presell. If you can manage to get the article written well. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. This is pretty easy – you just make a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image with no border and make the “source” of the image your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)

In closing:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Please don’t be lazy. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…